About Arnold

A Filipino tech guy who reluctantly pursued entrepreneurship and now leads TeamSparrow, a team of web developers, designers and marketers based in Mandaluyong City, Philippines. A husband, father and a follower of Jesus.

Tag: tools

Porn addiction is serious. And I know of people who are addicted to it but really want to help themselves in getting rid of it.

While reading a discussion in a mailing list, I accidentally stumbled upon OpenDNS, a free dns service provider. I signed up, applied the configuration to our office network and tested several levels of security. It works! (This service, by the way, isn’t just about filtering porn sites. It has different level of filtering which includes social networking sites, dating, drug related websites. Works well if you have teenagers at home or you want to play “police” to your employees. Me? I don’t have a teenager yet and I just play it low with my employees)

If you’re serious about helping yourself, sign up to this free service, follow the instructions in changing your dns configuration, log in and click on “settings”. Set your content filtering to at least “low”. This includes filtering of adult related websites.

Disclaimer: I’m not sure how true these are. I honestly just ripped this off other blogs (and a pretty common information circulating in emails). But since gasoline prices are at all time high, we can desperately try anything that can save us gas. So, Here are some tricks to help you get your money’s worth.

1. Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool.

2. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground; and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands, so if you’re filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and temperature of the fuel (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products) are significant.

Every truckload that we load is temperature- compensated so that the indicated gallonage is actually the amount pumped.

A one-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for businesses, but service stations don’t
have temperature compensation at their pumps.

If a tanker truck is filling the station’s tank at the time you want to buy gas, do not fill up; most likely dirt and sludge in the tank is being stirred up when gas is being delivered, and you might be transferring that dirt from the bottom of their tank into your car’s tank.

3. Fill up when your gas tank is half-full (or half-empty), because the more gas you have in your tank the less air there is and gasoline evaporates rapidly, especially when it’s warm. (Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating ‘roof’ membrane to act as a barrier between the gas and the atmosphere, thereby minimizing evaporation. )

4. If you look at the trigger you’ll see that it has three delivery settings: slow, medium and high. When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to the high setting. You should be pumping at the slow setting, thereby minimizing vapors created while you are pumping. Hoses at the pump are corrugated; the corrugations act as a return path for vapor
recovery from gas that already has been metered. If you are pumping at the high setting, the agitated gasoline contains more vapor, which is being sucked back into the underground tank, so you’re getting less gas for your money.

Not yet available here in the Philippines, but Amazon Kindle looks very promising. Imagine iPod. You bring your whole CD library where ever you go. Now, covert the thought to your books. Amazon Kindle digitalizes the books — actually, books that you buy at Amazon.com, leading newspapers and even blogs. Download these digital materials through a fast wireless connection. Very good for travelers looking for a quick read while on the road.

I know that some of you who visit this blog are not bloggers but are considering to become one. Swerve, a blog primarily for pastors and leaders of churches posted a series of articles that discusses what blog is all about — blogging 101 for non-bloggers. Read these and you’ll find yourself craving to start blogging yourself. Even if you’ll not be convinced, you’ll find this series very informative.

If you want more flexibility and total control of the look and feel of your blog, you can consider getting a web host (normally costs $10/mo.) and install WordPress (most dynamic, easiest to install and use, IMO).